Social networking giant, Facebook, have announced plans that might anger some users - they're allowing external marketers to mine new customers from Facebook using personal information. This information would include phone numbers, e-mail addresses, Facebook users' unique UID code, and other details.

This new targeting option is said to be available to advertisers as soon as next week, with the social network saying that advertisers will have to ask their customers' permission before using the data for marketing purposes before they proceed, if that makes you feel any better.

Some users already had access to "custom audiences" earlier today using Facebook's "Power Editor" tool for advertisers. This allowed the selection of which specific type of information they are targeting, and then upload a comma separated value (CSV) spreadsheet with identifying information. None of the data searched is being acquired by Facebook, with the user needing to give permission for the searchable data to the network.

How do you feel about this? Facebook games already ask permission for scary amounts of data, and people just blindly click 'yes' or 'I agree' without really reading the T&Cs of it all. The future of Facebook is sure to get more interesting.